The mothers and the wives of those who had repaired to the field of battle from the neighbouring country to die with the king, came to the field to seek for and to bury the bodies of their sons and husbands. The body of King Harold remained for some time on the battle-field, and no one dared ask for it. At length Godwin's widow, named Githa, overcoming her anguish, sent a message to Duke William, demanding his permission to perform the last rites in honour of her son. She offered, say the Norman historians, to give him the weight of her son's body in gold. But the duke refused harshly, saying that the man who had belied his faith and his religion should have no sepulture but the sands of the shore. He, however, eventually became milder, if we may believe an old tradition on this score, in favour of the monks of Waltham—an abbey founded and enriched in his lifetime by Harold. Two Saxon monks, Osgod and Ailrik, deputed by the Abbot of Waltham, made request and obtained leave to transport to their church the sad remains of its benefactor. They then proceeded to the heap of slain that had been spoiled of armour and of vestments, and examined them carefully one after another, but he whom they sought for had been so much disfigured by wounds that they could not recognise it. Sorrowing, and despairing of succeeding in their search by themselves, they applied to a woman whom Harold, before he was king, had kept as his mistress, and entreated her to assist them. She was called Edith, and poetically surnamed the Swan-necked. She consented to follow the two monks, and succeeded better than they had done in discovering the corpse of him whom she had loved.

These events are all related by the chroniclers of the AngloSaxon race in a tone of dejection which it is difficult to transfuse. They call the day of the battle a day of bitterness, a day of death, a day stained with the blood of the brave. "England, what shall I say of thee?" exclaims the historian of the church of Ely; "what shall I say of thee to our descendants? That thou hast lost thy national king, and hast fallen under the domination of foreigners; that thy sons have perished miserably; that thy councillors and thy chieftains are vanquished, slain, or disinherited!" Long after the day of this fatal conflict, patriotic superstition believed that the fresh traces of blood were still to be seen on the ground where the battle was. These traces were said to be visible on the heights to the north-west of Hastings whenever a little rain moistened the soil.* The conqueror, immediately upon gaining the victory, made a vow to erect on this ground a convent, dedicated to the Holy Trinity and to St. Martin, the patron of the soldiers of Gaul. Soon afterwards, when his good fortune permitted him to fulfil this vow, the great altar of the monastery was placed on the spot where the Saxon standard of King Harold had been planted and torn down. The circuit of the exterior walls

*The redness of the water here, and at many other places in the neighbourhood, is caused by the oxidozation of the iron which abounds in the soil of the weald of Sussex. Chronicle of Battel Abbey.

was traced so as to enclose all the hill which the bravest of the English had covered with their bodies. All the circumjacent land, a league wide, on which the different scenes of the battle had been acted, became the property of this abbey, which, in the Norman language, was called l'Abbaye de la Bataille, or Battel Abbey. Monks from the great convent of Marmoutiers, near Tours, came to establish here their domicile, and they prayed for the repose of the souls of all the combatants who perished on that fatal day.

It is said that, when the first stones of the edifice were laid, the architects discovered that there would certainly be a want of water. Being disconcerted, they carried this disagreeable news to William. "Work, work away," replied the conqueror jocularly; "if God grant me life, there shall be more wine for the monks of Battel to drink than there now is clear water in the best convent in Christendom." Thierry's History, p. 68.

REIGN OF THE CONQUEROR.

FROM 1066 TO 1087-20 YEARS, 10 MONTHS, 25 DAYS.
THE CONQUEROR'S COURTSHIP.

"Duke William of Normandy," says William of Jumièges, "having learned that Baldwin, Earl of Flanders, had a daughter named Matilda, very beautiful in person, and of a generous disposition, sent deputies, by the advice of his peers, to ask her of her father in marriage, who gladly consented, and gave her a large portion." Seven long years, however, of stormy debate intervened before the courtship of William of Normandy was brought to this happy conclusion. Contemporary chroniclers, indeed, afford us reason to suspect that the subsequent conquest of England proved a less difficult achievement to the valiant duke than the wooing and winning of Matilda of Flanders. He had to contend against the opposition of the Courts of France and Burgundy, the intrigues of his rival kinsmen of the race of Rollo, the objections of the Church, and, worse than all, the reluctance and disdain of the lady. The chronicler, Ingerius, declares "that William was so infuriated by the scorn with which Matilda treated him, that he waylaid her in the streets of Bruges, as she was returning with her ladies from mass, beat her, rolled her in the mud, spoiled her rich array, and then rode off at full speed." This teutonic mode of courtship, according to the above authority, brought the matter to a favourable crisis; for Matilda, being convinced of the strength of William's passion by the violence of his behaviour, or afraid of encountering a second beating, consented to become his wife. A different version of this strange episode in the royal wooing is given by Baudoin d'Avesnes, who shows that the provocation which the Duke William had received from his fair cousin was not merely a rejection of his matrimonial overtures, but an insulting allusion to the defect in his birth. According to this writer, the Earl of Flanders

received the Norman envoys who came to treat for a marriage between their duke and Matilda very courteously, and expressed great satisfaction at the proposed alliance; but when he spoke of it to the damsel his daughter, she replied with infinite disdain, that she would not have a bastard for her husband.

The earl softened the coarse terms in which Matilda had signified her rejection of Duke William, and excused her as well as he could to the Norman deputies; it was not long, however, before William was informed of what Matilda had really said. He was peculiarly sensitive on the painful subject of his illegitimacy, and no one ever taunted him with it unpunished. Neither the rank nor the soft sex of the fair offender availed to protect her from his vengeance. In a transport of fury he mounted his horse, and, attended only by a few of his people, rode privately to Lille, where the court of Flanders then was. He alighted at the palace gates, entered the hall of presence alone, passed boldly through it, strode unquestioned through the state apartments of the Earl of Flanders, and burst into the countess's chamber, where he found the damsel, her daughter, whom he seized by her long tresses, and as she, of course, struggled to escape from his ruffian-grasp, dragged her by them about the chamber, struck her repeatedly, and flung her on the ground at his feet. After the perpetration of these outrages, he made his way back to the spot where his squire held his horse in readiness, sprang to the saddle, and setting spurs to the good steed, distanced all pursuit.*

In after days, when the quarrel was adjusted, and the bold duke had won his bride, in the midst of the rejoicings at the nuptial feast the Earl of Flanders, waxing merry, asked his daughter, laughingly, how it happened that she had so easily been brought to consent at last to a marriage which she had so scornfully refused in the first instance. "Because," replied Matilda, pleasantly, "I did not know the duke so well then as I do now; for" continued she," he must be a man of great courage and high daring who could venture to come and beat me in my own father's palace."

Agnes Strickland's Queens of England, New Edition, vol. i., p. 24.

FORMATION OF THE NEW FOREST.

The Normans, as well as the ancient Saxons, were passionately fond of the chase, and none more so than the conqueror. Not content with those large forests which former kings possessed in all parts of England, he resolved to make a new forest near Winchester, the usual place of his residence. For that purpose he laid waste the country for an extent of thirty miles, expelled the inhabitants from their houses, seized their property, demolished thirtysix churches, besides convents, and made the sufferers no compen

* Although the Norman, French, and Flemish chroniclers differ as to the place where William the Conqueror perpetrated this rude personal assault on his fair cousin, and relate the manner of it with some few variations, they all agree to the fact that he felled her to the ground by the violence of his blows.

sation for the injury; at the same time he enacted new laws, by which be prohibited all his subjects from hunting in any of his forests, and ordained the most dreadful penalties for their violation. The killing of a deer or a boar, or even a hare, was punished with the loss of the delinquent's eyes; and that, too, at a time when the killing of a man could be atoned for by paying a moderate composition. Hume vol. i., p. 277.

THE FEUDAL LAW.

The conqueror divided all the lands, with very few exceptions, besides the royal demesnes, into baronies; these baronies were again let out to knights or vassals, who paid the lord the same submission in peace or war which he himself paid to his sovereign. The whole kingdom contained about 700 chief tenants, and 60,215 knights-fees; none of the natives were admitted into the first rank, but were glad to be received into the second, and thus be the dependants of some powerful Norman. Hume, vol. i., p. 253.

ELEVATION OF THE NORMANS.

The man who had passed the sea with the quilted cassock, and black wooden bow of the foot-soldier, now appeared to the astonished eyes of the new recruits who came after him, mounted on a war-horse, and bearing the military baldrick. He who had arrived as a poor knight soon lifted his banner (as it was then expressed) and commanded a company, whose rallying-cry was his own name. The herdsman of Normandy, and the weavers of Flanders, with a little courage and good fortune, soon became in England men of consequence-illustrious barons; and their names, ignoble and obscure on one shore of the Straits, became noble and glorious on the other. The servants of the Norman man-at-arms, his lance-bearer, his esquire, became gentlemen in England; they were men of consequence and consideration when placed in comparison with the Saxon, who had himself once enjoyed wealth and titles. but who was now oppressed by the sword of the invader, was expelled from the home of his fathers, and had not where to lay his head. This natural and general nobuity of all the conquerors increased in the same ratio as the authority or personal importance of each. In the new nobility, after the style and kingly title of William, was classed the dignity of the governor of a province, as count or earl; next to him that of his lieutenant, as vicecount or viscount; and then the rank of the warriors, whether as barons, knights, esquires, or serjeants-at-arms; of unequal grades of nobility, but all reported to be noble, whether by right of their victory, or by their foreign extraction. Thierry's History, p. 77.

DEGRADATION OF THE SAXONS.

Contumely was wantonly added to oppression; and the unfortunate natives were universally reduced to such a state of meanness and poverty, that for ages the English name became a term

of reproach, and several generations elapsed before one single family of Saxon pedigree was raised to any considerable honours, or could so much as attain the rank of baron of the realm.

Hume, vol. i., p. 283.

DOOMSDAY-BOOK.

It consists of two volumes, a greater and a less. The first is a large folio, written in 382 double pages of vellum, in a small but plain character; each page having a double column. Some of the capital letters and principal passages are touched with red ink, and some have strokes of red ink run across, as if scratched out. This volume contains the description of 31 countries. The other volume is a quarto, written upon 450 double pages of vellum, but in a single column, and on a large and in a fair character. It contains the counties of Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk, part of the county of Rutland, including that of Northampton, and part of Lincolnshire in the counties of York and Chester.

Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. vi.

This survey was begun in the year 1080, and finished in 1086. It was made by verdict or presentment of juries, or certain persons sworn in every hundred, wapentake, or county, before commissioners, consisting of the greatest earls or bishops, who inquired into, and described as well the possessions and customs of the king as of his great men. They noted what and how much arable land, pasture, meadow, and wood every man had, and what was the extent and value of them in the time of Edward the Confessor, and at the time of making the survey. This survey was made by counties, hundreds, towns, or manors, hides, half-hides, virgates, and acres of land, meadow, pasture, and wood. Also they noted what mills and fisheries, and, in some counties, what and how many freemen, socmen, villains, bordars, servants, young cattle, sheep, hogs, working horses, &c., in every town and manor, and who they belonged to. Always setting down the king's name first, then the bishops, abbots, and all the great men that held of the king in chief. Brady, pp. 205-206.

Yet this is not so exact a survey as some historians would represent it; the monks of Croyland, in Lincolnshire, evaded giving an accurate account, and many towns and cities then in existence were altogether omitted. Rapin, vol. i., p. 177.

THE CURFEW.

William, knowing how ill the English stood affected to him, resolved to take all possible measures to screen himself from their resentment; for that purpose he took two precautions which were equally insupportable to them. The first was to take away their arms, the second to forbid them any lights in their houses after eight o'clock, at which hour a bell was rung to warn them to put